Monica Bonvicini (b. Venice, 1965, lives in Berlin) often utilises materials such as glass, chains, fences, scaffolding and metal in her installations, to ironise and question the masculinity and shows of force associated with such methods of construction. Her installations provide confrontations and meditations on the determining nature of architecture, examining how design and built structures inform and affirm gender roles and classist systems. Inherent in her oeuvre is a dry wit and a defiant resistance towards inequality and discrimination.

Bonvicini first participated in Lustwarande in 2009 with the chain work Prozac, which hung around the trunks of two monumental beech trees. Foregrounding Bonvicini’s enquiries into industrial production, it brought the flawed titular pharmaceutical (a bestseller antidepressant in the ‘90s, which had an upswing in popularity during the pandemic) to De Oude Warande. Suspended around trees, it raised questions of what provides peace and health to humans – questions for which both art and drugs hold uncertain answers.
It can also be viewed in the context of the artist’s history of working with text, literature and poetry, from light works such as Not For You (2006) to the London public sculpture Run (2012) and the drawings from the Never Tire series (2020). In the latter, sentences by writers like Roland Barthes, Judith Butler and Natalie Diaz were recomposed to create a choir of political and poetic voices.

In STATIONS, Bonvicini presented a new installation that also plays on literary order and disorder. At the entrance avenue, seven red shields of aluminum were attached to a number of tree trunks. Acting as welcoming signs and laced with relational and architectural references, these plaques entered into a critical affiliation with the place itself and the people they encounter. Phrases like ‘I don’t like you very much’ or ‘So many roots to the tree of anger’ challenge socio-cultural conventions as well as prejudicial and patriarchal systems. It is a stark response to the abuse of power and oppression that women and minorities face daily. Many of the sentences originate in the short stories of Diana Williams and were first explored in the major installation As Walls Keep Shifting (OGR Turin, 2019, Busan Biennial, 2020), juxtaposing the intimate and private action of writing with the experience of public life and space – from city architecture to the woods of Lustwarande.